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“This month we are offering over 200 early music albums at 25% off, courtesy of the early music label Chaconne, which is renowned for its broad cross section of early-music repertoire from Medieval to Classical, performed on original or period instruments.

“Before he changed the course of operatic history with his "reform" operas of the 1760s and 1770s, Gluck was a respected and thoroughly conventional composer of opera seria, almost all of them written to librettos by Metastasio. …

“Medieval bestiaries combined descriptions of animals with religious and moral meaning. These collections of stories were very popular in the middle ages, and musicians expanded on the idea, creating musical works referencing one or more animals.

“To listen one after the other to musical settings of the same texts by composers from different periods and places is always an interesting opportunity to compare their diverging musical solutions; but …

EarlyMusicNews.org Weblinks Revisited

“ArkivMusic specializes in the efficient delivery of the broadest selection of classical music titles in the U.S., direct to the consumer. There are currently over 90,000 CD, DVD, SACD, Blu-ray Disc, and 320-kbps MP3 titles in the ArkivMusic database, shipping from over 20 distribution centers around the country. This distribution network allows ArkivMusic to have more titles in stock every day than any other online retailer, assuring the most expeditious delivery and largest selection of classical music.

“Imagine yourself in New England at around the time of the American Revolution. Now, put yourself in class at one of the popular singing-schools that flourished at that time. You’re there to learn how to read your notes, sing in tune, and do choral singing.

GEMS is all about increasing public understanding and appreciation of early music, enrich our community, and enhance the quality and stability of participating artists and organizations in New York. One area worth visiting on the GEMS website is the GEMS CD Store.

Harmonia celebrates springtime with songs and dance music from the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and early Baroque.

In temperate regions, there is no more highly-anticipated season of the year than spring. After many long and dreary winter months, spring brings relief in the form of warmer weather, more sun, a welcoming outdoors, and the flowering of trees and other vegetation. Spring can be seen, heard, and felt.

… The American medieval ensemble Cançonièr has taken inspiration from Benheim’s poem as well as the music from Dracula’s time. Their recording “The Black Dragon” includes traditional and art music of the period in addition to excerpts from the blood-curdling poem.

To those who may be interested, we are trying a new idea - for us at least. Responding to requests from our audiences, we have just posted a few singles of pieces that we frequently perform live but have not been included on our CDs.

The Seattle-based Tudor Choir has been performing Renaissance polyphony and early American music for nearly two decades. The flexible ensemble is made up of twelve core singers and is directed by its founder, Doug Fullington. The choir’s performances and recordings have received international acclaim.

This is the third annual podcast to focus on some of the most interesting early music heard throughout the year. The list, whittled down from hundreds of choices, is meant to cover recordings that have been heard either on the weekly podcast or program, yet there is at least one gem that will be new to Harmonia’s loyal followers.

This recording represents in a sense the accomplishment of René Jacobs’s Mozartian enterprise: after showing us another way of looking at the Da Ponte trilogy and taking a profoundly innovative approach to the two great opere serie (Idomeneo and La clemenza di Tito), he has now set out to harmonise the multitude of viewpoints exposed more or clearly in Die Zauberflöte, ranging far beyond its Masonic rituals and mixture of dramatic genres. As a result, Mozart’s most ‘nocturnal’ work is illuminated as if by . . . magic.